The Perfect Machine Quotes

“Those who had spent a whole night, or sometimes three whole nights, cramped and cold, with a bursting bladder, while they guided a telescope to keep the pinpoint of a faint star in the cross-hair of an eyepiece, knew the advantages of a fast telescope.”
― Ronald Florence, The Perfect Machine: Building the Palomar Telescope – A Poignant Chronicle of Big Science Born in Depression-Era America

“Night after night he exposed plates on the big reflector. Day after day he studied the plates. The telescope drive turned the telescope on its polar axis to compensate for the rotation of the earth, but to make a successful plate, the observer had to track a guide star within the field of the exposure, using electrical hand controls to make tiny movements in the position of the telescope that would compensate for atmospheric effects, the flexure of the telescope tube and mount, and the slight quirks of the telescope-guiding mechanism. As the telescope slewed to different portions of the sky, Hubble had to contort his body on a precarious perch to keep the guide star in the crosshairs of the eyepiece. The winter nights were cold enough to freeze his tears to the eyepiece. The exposures were long enough to test his bladder control. By morning his body would be a bundle of cricks. Lack of sleep and hours staring at the glass plates gave him headaches.”
― Ronald Florence, The Perfect Machine: Building the Palomar Telescope – A Poignant Chronicle of Big Science Born in Depression-Era America

“Among astronomers Ritchey was known for his fierce concentration and what one colleague called “the temperament of an artist and a thousand prima donnas.” Ritchey would sometimes spend hours on a single photograph, setting and resetting the focus until it was exactly right, waiting for the perfect seeing conditions, then concentrating so intensely on guiding the fine motions of the telescope that an explosion nearby would not have distracted him. The resulting photograph would be an artistic masterpiece—except when Ritchey, lost in his concentration, neglected to record the date, time, or sky conditions, so that the plate was useless for scientific purposes.”
― Ronald Florence, The Perfect Machine: Building the Palomar Telescope – A Poignant Chronicle of Big Science Born in Depression-Era America